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Enquiring, then, of Plato as to our own soul, we find
ourselves forced to enquire into the nature of soul in general-
to discover what there can be in its character to bring it into
partnership with body, and, again, what this kosmos must be in
which, willing unwilling or in any way at all, soul has its
activity.
We have to face also the question as to whether the Creator has
planned well or ill...... like our souls, which it may be, are
such that governing their inferior, the body, they must sink
deeper and deeper into it if they are to control it.
No doubt the individual body- though in all cases appropriately
placed within the universe- is of itself in a state of
dissolution, always on the way to its natural terminus, demanding
much irksome forethought to save it from every kind of outside
assailant, always gripped by need, requiring every help against
constant difficulty: but the body inhabited by the World-Soul-
complete, competent, self-sufficing, exposed to nothing contrary
to its nature- this needs no more than a brief word of command,
while the governing soul is undeviatingly what its nature makes
it wish to be, and, amenable neither to loss nor to addition,
knows neither desire nor distress.
This is how we come to read that our soul, entering into
association with that complete soul and itself thus made perfect,
walks the lofty ranges, administering the entire kosmos, and that
as long as it does not secede and is neither inbound to body nor
held in any sort of servitude, so long it tranquilly bears its
part in the governance of the All, exactly like the world-soul
itself; for in fact it suffers no hurt whatever by furnishing
body with the power to existence, since not every form of care
for the inferior need wrest the providing soul from its own sure
standing in the highest.
The soul's care for the universe takes two forms: there is the
supervising of the entire system, brought to order by deedless
command in a kindly presidence, and there is that over the
individual, implying direct action, the hand to the task, one
might say, in immediate contact: in the second kind of care the
agent absorbs much of the nature of its object.
Now in its comprehensive government of the heavenly system, the
soul's method is that of an unbroken transcendence in its highest
phases, with penetration by its lower power: at this, God can no
longer be charged with lowering the All-Soul, which has not been
deprived of its natural standing and from eternity possesses and
will unchangeably possess that rank and habit which could never
have been intruded upon it against the course of nature but must
be its characteristic quality, neither failing ever nor ever
beginning.
Where we read that the souls or stars stand to their bodily forms
as the All to the material forms within it- for these starry
bodies are declared to be members of the soul's circuit- we are
given to understand that the star-souls also enjoy the blissful
condition of transcendence and immunity that becomes them.
And so we might expect: commerce with the body is repudiated for
two only reasons, as hindering the soul's intellective act and as
filling with pleasure, desire, pain; but neither of these
misfortunes can befall a soul which has never deeply penetrated
into the body, is not a slave but a sovereign ruling a body of
such an order as to have no need and no shortcoming and therefore
to give ground for neither desire nor fear.
There is no reason why it should be expectant of evil with regard
to such a body nor is there any such preoccupied concern,
bringing about a veritable descent, as to withdraw it from its
noblest and most blessed vision; it remains always intent upon
the Supreme, and its governance of this universe is effected by a
power not calling upon act.
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